Documentary Kikuyu Land examines colonial legacy behind Kenya's tea industry

A new documentary, Kikuyu Land, explores the historical impact of colonial-era and subsequent corporate agricultural development on Kenya's tea-growing regions, according to a review of the film.

The documentary, directed by Andrew Harrison Brown and Bea Wangondu, focuses on the central highlands of Kenya, an area known for extensive tea plantations largely worked by members of the Kikuyu community. The film examines how the region's celebrated tea industry was built on a history of land dispossession and labour exploitation dating back to British colonial rule.

According to the review, the documentary opens with archival footage of a speech by Evelyn Baring, Kenya's colonial governor during the 1950s, which the filmmakers use to establish the imperial motivations behind the expansion of agricultural development in the country. The film then traces how Kikuyu communities were displaced from ancestral land, with their labour subsequently used to build the plantation economy that continued to generate wealth for colonial and later corporate interests.

The documentary reportedly follows multiple threads, including the efforts of a pastor and activist referred to as Mr Mungai, who has pursued numerous legal cases over decades in an attempt to reclaim family land lost during the colonial period. The film also includes testimony from plantation workers, past and present, describing experiences of exploitation that the review says have often gone unaddressed by corporate and government institutions.

The film reportedly includes an account from a former officer of Kenya's national intelligence service, who describes methods allegedly used by the state to suppress critics of the agricultural system depicted in the documentary. Taken together, these strands are said to create an atmosphere the review describes as one of ongoing intimidation surrounding efforts to challenge the status quo.

The documentary situates itself within broader debates about the legacies of colonialism in agricultural economies, and about the continuing role corporate actors have played in perpetuating patterns of inequality first established under colonial administration.